Trump's 'Left Turn'
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
The following headline appears in The Financial Times: "Donald Trump Leans Left in Bid to Revive Flagging Poll Numbers."
I completely agree with the first four words; the rest of it is true, but wrongly implies that this is a new development on his part.
The blurb does indicate the cause of that perception, though: US president's proposed pharma price cuts and tax increases for the rich echo policies of progressive Democrats . The piece elaborates:
"I think Trump realises that these things are popular and he's a guy that likes to be popular," said Liz Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning economic think-tank, and a former Sanders aide on Capitol Hill.This pro-capitalist voter saw enough of this before the election that he voted for Harris as the lesser of two evils. Even if Trump hadn't tried to overthrow the government in early 2020, what would be the point in electing someone whose opposition to the left took the form of embracing leftist policies -- like a dovish foreign policy and tariffs -- and putting leftists like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard into major cabinet posts? Why not vote for the candidate who at least had the good grace to admit being a Democrat?
Trump's shift [sic] in certain areas of tax and health policy has come as his poll numbers droop over his handling of the economy and the severe market whiplash from his tariff plans, which he has been rapidly rolling back.
He may also be looking to defuse Democratic attacks ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. During Trump's first term, Democrats regained their majority in the House of Representatives by criticising the president and his party for giving giant tax cuts to the wealthy while seeking to slash healthcare access for middle- and lower-income Americans -- a fate the president will want to avoid in his second term.
But the change also reflects a broader drive by Trump [sic] to recast the Republicans as the party of the working class rather than of business -- a transformation that began during his first term but is more pronounced during his second. [links omitted, bold added]
Also: Does anyone still remember Trump's campaign promise to cap credit card interest rates? I certainly do.
On top of this being a shift-that-isn't a shift and a sellout of his supporters that anyone should have seen coming, the shift in the GOP isn't entirely being driven by Trump, who merely wants to be popular and has no coherent ideology.
Trump used the religious right and Christian Nationalists in his party to gain power, and they are using him. The likes of J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley, for example, favor industrial policy and have worked on legislation with Elizabeth Warren. Ideologues, including the current Secretary of State are publishing pieces that show clearly that this isn't your father's GOP.
The idea that workers and industrialists don't have the same interest in freedom is about as far a cry from classical liberalism as one can get -- but it is popular, given the generations of spadework our cultural institutions have done teaching it. The fact that it is such a commonplace shows where our culture is now, and explains why, when Trump latches onto something to boost his popularity, it is almost invariably leftist.
I haven't time to comment much more on this today, but it does bring to mind earlier political figures like Trump, who was the first of these to manage to get elected. One of these was George Wallace, about whom Ayn Rand said:
Lacking any intellectual or ideological program, Wallace is not the representative of a positive movement, but of a negative: he is not for anything, he is merely against the rule of the "liberals." This is the root of his popular appeal: he is attracting people who are desperately, legitimately frustrated, bewildered and angered by the dismal bankruptcy of the "liberals'" policies, people who sense that something is terribly wrong in this country and that something should be done about it, but who have no idea of what to do. Neither has Wallace -- which is the root of the danger he represents: a leader without ideology cannot save a country collapsing from lack of ideology."A leader without ideology cannot save a country collapsing from lack of ideology."
It is enormously significant that in many sections of the country (as indicated by a number of polls) former followers of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy are switching their support to George Wallace. At a superficial glance, this may appear to be a contradiction, since these two figures seem to represent exact opposites in their political views. But, in fact, it is not a contradiction: in terms of fundamentals, both Robert Kennedy and George Wallace are "activists" -- i.e., men who propose (and clearly project the intention) to take direct action, action by the use of physical force, to solve problems or to achieve (unspecified) goals. In this sense, both these leaders are symptomatic of a country's intellectual and cultural disintegration, of the ugly despair which seizes people when -- disillusioned in the power of ideas, abandoning reason -- they seek physical force as their last resort. [emphasis in original]
What was once an observation is now a warning to those of us who would not want to see it as a prophecy.
-- CAV